Aftershocks

Monday morning Hawaii, it’s worth remembering, is a volcanic formation. Earthquakes can and do happen there. But a 6.6 quake–well, most of the people we reached there said this was the strongest one they can remember, and records show it was the strongest there since 1983. If you didn’t see it yesterday, we had a story about what people felt and saw; it’s HERE. By way of comparison, the Northridge, California quake in 1994 was a 6.7. The U.S. Geological Survey has posted details of Sunday’s quake HERE. The vast majority of the world’s earthquakes happen along the borders between the major tectonic plates, which, of course, explains why so many happen along the Pacific Rim, in Turkey and along the line where the Indian subcontinent is slowly colliding with the rest of Asia. If you look at the map (courtesy of a USGS publication This Dynamic Earth; more HERE), you’ll see Hawaii in the middle of a sea of beige. Fifty-eight people died in the Northridge earthquake twelve years ago, according to the Los Angeles Coroner, and more than 9,000 were injured. Reliable numbers from Hawaii are still to come.